Occitania has received approval to fly its Falcon 50 fleet into London City airport (LCY). The Le Bourget-based company says it had been turning away two to three enquiries a week, and is delighted to now be able to live up to its clients’ requests.

Speaking from the company’s London office, Andrew Lee told EBAN: “When I joined the company in September of last year, I made it one of my first priorities to get them approved for London City because it is such a valuable market. We’ve been turning away a lot of business because we didn’t have

the approval.

“After I persuaded the company in January of this year, it was just a case of putting the crew through flightsafety at Paris, simulator training etc, and waiting for the paperwork to come through from the relevant authorities.”

Occitania says the approval has already paid off as it has recently been awarded an important contract to supply Falcon 50 aircraft to a well known petroleum company which regularly uses London City.

So what’s so special about City airport? Said Lee: “It’s really close to the city centre itself, and it’s close to the business community, where all the banks are. We get lots of enquiries about financial roadshows around Europe and one of the destinations they ask to land at is City airport, because it’s so convenient for the Docklands and the city.

“Airports like Stansted are not bad alternatives but it’s still not in the heart of London.”

Further news from Occitania is that a third Falcon 50 will be delivered at the end of the month.

In the next few months, Occitania is also hoping to get its Falcon 900s and Citation Jets approved for LCY. Said Lee: “It really hinges on how much business we actually get out of City airport but we’re confident that we’re going to be busy.”

One of the few downsides for business aviation at London City, said Lee, is the restricted access hours. Between 7.45am and 9am, GA aircraft are not permitted to land because of the many scheduled services.

Of late, Occitania’s Falcon 50s have carried out missions to the Middle East, Africa and the CIS, while the 900s have been probing into South America, the Caribbean and Singapore.

Lee added: “We tend to do an awful lot of flying down to Africa. We fly for US petroleum companies, down to places like Angola, which are rich in minerals. The oil companies like the idea of using a jet with a European crew which are quite experienced in that part of the world. It makes them feel safer.”

Eastern Europe is also proving a popular destination for some of Occitania’s clients. Lee explained: “There are a lot of midsized companies coming into the market now, which may not have considered chartering before and because all these barriers are dropping between countries and we’re getting a lot of Eastern European countries coming into the EEC, there’s a lot of demand for aircraft to fly out there.

“We often get enquiries from midsized companies wanting to fly some executives to various parts of Eastern Europe over a period of days.”

“It’s a quiter time of year at the moment on the larger aircraft, but if the last few months are anything to go by, there’s still quite a lot of money out there and plenty of people interested in flying.”

With regard to Occitania’s terminal at Paris Le Bourget, which opened at the end of last year, Lee added: “It’s fully open now and although its currently exclusive to Occitania passengers, we haven’t ruled out the possibility of doing handling for other companies in the future.”